Focusing on Virginia Woolf and her circle, past and present

Woolf sightings: Last-minute summer reads

School is in, and summer is on the wane. But this week’s Woolf sightings include numerous references to books that are either reminiscent of Virginia Woolf or connected to her in some way. I plan to add a few to my fall reading list, since I am already way behind on my list of summer picks. Perhaps I should call them wish lists instead.

Nilanjana S Roy The writing circus, Business StandardIn an essay on Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf reflected how close the other author had come to losing her obscurity — Austen was so close to becoming famous, at the time of her death. “She would have stayed in London, dined out, lunched out, met famous …

Night Life, New Yorker
Holter painstakingly crafted the album in the course of nearly three years, and her quasi-liturgical pop ballads are strikingly advanced. The music evokes Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson, while the clever lyrics cite Anne Carson, Virginia Woolf, Frank O …

‘NW’ by Zadie Smith, New York Times
If E. M. Forster’s “Howards End” provided an armature of sorts for “On Beauty,” the ghost of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” haunts “NW.” Not only does Ms. Smith employ a Woolf-like, stream-of-consciousness technique to trace her characters’ thoughts …

Umbrella, By Will Self, The Independent
In recent interviews he has opined on the high Modernism of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, and his new book adopts their techniques. Recounted in a series of monologues, Umbrella has no chapters and few paragraph breaks to interrupt the narrative flow …

Interview: Pat Barker, author of new book Toby’s Room, Scotsman
I was also struck by the echo of Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, in her choice of title, not least because Elinor is on the fringes of the Bloomsbury set, which briefly appears in both novels, and Elinor herself is partially patterned on Dora Carrington …

Letting go — Phase two of a young life begins, Bismarck Tribune
St. Augustine and Dante to Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf. She’ll be too busy to be homesick, I hope, because she is about to discover that you surf through high school on your wits, but in college you actually have to earn your way to excellence and …

Toby’s Room, By Pat Barker, The Independent
“What do we seek through millions of pages?” asked Virginia Woolf’s narrator in Jacob’s Room (1922), her elegy for her beloved brother, Thoby. “Oh, here is Jacob’s room.” A room, yes, but no Jacob. Where is he? Who was he? How did we come to lose him?

Dear Diary, Patheos (blog)
In fact, I modeled my journal on Virginia Woolf’s commonplace book: a place to keep notes on what I was reading, to record daily events and to probe my psyche, and to test out writing techniques. I’d find a metaphor for something I’d experienced, then …

Is the Internet Making Us Forget?, Daily Beast
“What a lark, what a plunge,” opens Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, as Clarissa tosses open her French windows and is transported into her remembered past. “Live in the moment” is a directive we often hear these days in yoga class, but our ability to …

Lisa Cohen (The Bat Segundo Show), Reluctant Habits
Subjects Discussed: Spending years conducting book research, Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, and Madge Garland, Garland’s connection to Virginia Woolf,Virginia Woolf’s diaries, the early history of British Vogue, the side effects of spending …

6 LGBT Labor Day vacation beach reads, Boston.com (blog)
The writing is funny, heartfelt and smart—Bechdel references everything from Virginia Woolf and Adrienne Rich to psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, with a little Sondheim thrown in for good measure- and the artwork is beautifully detailed. This is a …